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Author: Lorraine

I feel like I am trapped in a modernized Edwardian marriage. I made some amazing insights while writing my musical. It’s like modern Christians have mindsets trapped in the Edwardian era that they just can’t seem to break free from.

The Edwardian era represented a strong shift in thought. This was somewhat due to Darwin, but it also had to deal with a rebellion against an era known as the “dirty 90’s”.

Then the first world war happened. This only caused people to shift further in this direction. It’s the idea that men have no control over their own actions, and only a strong moral woman can save them from themselves. Then another world war happened, one that was much worse. Then we just kind of kept having wars, until today.

This idea that men have no control over their actions is in stark contrast to the Enlightenment movement. According to the Enlightenment movement men are in control of themselves. They are sentient beings completely fully capable of making their own decisions. They are the ones in charge of households. The blame was always placed on men, and women were considered the weaker sex.

In today’s world the blame is always placed on women. It doesn’t matter what it happens to be or how apparent where the real blame lies. The blame is always placed on women. However, at the same time women need to be submissive to a man who apparently has no control over his own actions. That’s crazy. This system only works when society places blame on men, not women. Otherwise, the system completely falls apart. If women are going to take the blame, then they need to be the actual head of the household so they have control. To be blamed when you have no control is stressful.

I feel like I have been sheltered from the ways of the world for a long time. That seems a bit strange, because while growing up the blame was always placed on mothers. Daughters have a strange way of separating themselves from their mothers until they become mothers themselves, and then they awaken. They finally realize what it is like to be a woman in the modern world. It’s not fun.

Some women are cut out for this kind of stress. I am not unfortunately, and neither was my mother. She broke down, and fell very low. She simply just gave up.

That puts me in a worse situation unfortunately, because I live in her shadow. The stress placed on my shoulders to conform is twice of what was placed on her’s, because I am always reminded of what became of her. Now that I am in her situation, I kind of empathize with her. I understand what happened and why it happened. I understand that if action is not taken soon, that the same thing will happen to me.

I am trying so hard to prevent that from happening. In fact, it’s forced me to become really creative about it. That’s why I am writing musicals. It seems that this is the only platform where I am allowed to express how I really feel. Why musicals? I know, it seems a bit strange that I feel the need to write an entire Broadway musical to express my feelings.

That’s what it is truly like being a woman in today’s world. You can’t really be direct, because at the end of the day you love your husband. It’s really not about a lack of love. You only want to fix the problem, and the problem is the world. You just want all of them to get off your back, because if they did then fixing your problems would be much easier. It’s a lot easier to fix a problem if you can be open about what the problem actually is.

Prior to being in this situation I wrote songs, blogs, and slam poetry. I was allowed to be as direct as I wanted to be. Stress has forced me to become really creative. If you dare say anything bad about your life, then things will get much worse than they already are. Women are trapped. They are really trapped. I wasn’t trapped as a young women venting about her childhood, but I am very much trapped living as a wife.

What happens is that you keep reaching out, and the world keeps shutting you down. No help is available, and trying to reach out just makes things so much worse. This happens so much that your grace is destroyed. A marriage consists of two people, and if one person isn’t doing their part there is an issue here. Why should he do his part? He’s never been held accountable for anything he has ever done. He never will be. Eventually, you just kind of give up. Then you sink, like an anchor without a rope attached. Then instead of saving you, the world blames you for sinking. You sunk. Your family is falling a part. It’s all your fault. It’s your fault for sinking. I was asking for a life raft, where were you then?

Is this a sign of me giving up right now? Just choosing to write musicals all day? I kind of feel like it is my only way out. I keep trying to get through to him. My “giving up” like this is the only thing that’s gotten through to him. It’s really the only thing that makes him want to try, but he’s not trying hard enough. He finally realizes that if he wants to stay married to someone so much like him, then changes need to be made. He is trying really hard to get his CDL. The main problem is that his job really stresses him out. That’s why he’s failing to do his job at home. He needs a job with less stress.

If my husband needs a strong willed woman to keep him in line and make him realize he does indeed have a job at home that’s important too, then I have to let him go so he can find someone like that. I am strong willed, but not like this. I am strong willed in a much different way. I am the kind of person who is not scared to take chances or follow her dreams. Without goals or direction in life, I am literally nothing. The kind of woman you need to be to live this kind of life is to be the kind of woman who can survive without any real life goals. Your only goal in life should be to constantly save your man from himself. Only a woman like that can live a life like this. I need a man who is able to take care of himself on his own without being constantly nagged at. If my husband doesn’t want to be married to someone who is a nag, then he really needs to change. He can’t stayed married to someone so much like him at the soul level, because I keep getting blamed for his failures and I am sinking. Stress gets to me too. If he won’t save me from drowning, then who will? No one. I will just drown, and society will blame me for drowning. This is the life of a woman in America. It doesn’t even matter if you are college educated. It’s probably for the better if you are not, because then you can be happier living this way.

There is a lot of pressure on women to conform and become that kind of woman. It’s not just today, I remember it while growing up. I never realized the amount of hatred that can be bestowed on a women that is unwilling or simply unable to conform. It is pure hatred.

That’s especially true if I am living their “dream life”. I suppose this is the kind of life that would be the dream of many women, but it’s not my dream. “Oh I wish I could just sit on my ass all day and do nothing.” Really? You wish that? You might want to go get your head checked. I think you have a psychological problem. No one except someone who is severely depressed wishes that she can sit on her ass all day and do “nothing”. That’s not my dream. It’s never been my dream. If that’s your dream, then go fuck yourself. It’s people like you that keep wives locked in chains. No one in her right mind wants to sit on her ass all day and do “nothing”. Not unless they are severely depressed. In our society, instead of handing depressed women a life raft we become jealous of them. Twisted. Twisted indeed.

Yesterday was my husband’s first wife’s birthday. He did not go to her grave site. He didn’t even acknowledge this day on her Facebook page. I didn’t either, but that’s more due to the fact I am angry that people want me to literally become her. It has nothing to do with her at all, it has everything to do with them. Now people are going to get pissed of at me because I didn’t nag at him to do these things. Really? Really? That’s really NOT my job. If that’s the case, Kevin just needs a new wife. I’m gone. BYE!

Since I have already emotionally divorced him, I don’t consider this to be my job anymore. I am not actually divorced, just emotionally divorced. We have been emotionally divorced since Christmas. I am kind to him. I am still offer him lots of encouragement. I just no longer consider myself to be married to him. I quit that job three months ago.

If people have an issue with it I will simply say “I emotionally divorced Kevin three months ago so that’s no longer my job anymore. As far as I am concerned, we are no longer married. I am not Mrs. Albert. Go find someone new to blame.”

I did not forget to wish Laura a “happy birthday” on her Facebook. And I also didn’t forget to wish Kevin “Happy Valentine’s Day” on Facebook. I didn’t forget to get him a present, but I got him some chocolates that day. He actually remembered, without nagging. A miracle! And I am not going to “Forget” about wishing Kevin a happy birthday on FB. I know it’s his birthday. It’s not that I forgot. I didn’t forget. I will wish everyone else a happy birthday in the world on FB, except Kevin and Laura.

He also didn’t pay the storage unit, and everything of Laura’s is in there. I reminded him to do that, and he lied to me and said that he did. Then I got a delinquency notice in my e-mail. So even if you do nag at them, they can and do lie. You still get blamed. I don’t know why he would lie about paying the storage unit bill, or even what purpose this action serves. Is it his goal to have all his things that he deems important enough to store either be thrown away or go up for auction? It’s not even logical!

When someone lies like that, it stings. Like they stabbed you with a big needle. It depressed me so much, that I literally spent the entire day in bed. It was Saturday, my day off. He can take care of Joren. Lying to me is really not cool, and if he is going to lie like that again I have the power to make him very miserable. Very miserable indeed.

I am really tired of being derailed. My psychic/empathic/mediumship talents have always been a secondary talent. In order to do the work I needed to do, it’s something that I have kept to myself. In order to do the work I need to do, I need to be as normal as possible.

My life has been more about putting myself in positions where people will accept unsolicited advice. Becoming a teacher is a great way to do that. So is becoming an improviser. So is being an artist or a writer. It puts me in a position where I can help the people who needed it the most.

I have always wanted to help people who needed it the most.

That’s simply not working out for me anymore. I am not sure if it has ever worked out for me. Trying to give people unsolicited advice when I don’t really have the credentials to do so has never really worked out for me. It doesn’t matter how creative I am in my approach.

Perhaps I got this all wrong.

I have always trusted God or the Universe. I have always allowed God or the Universe to lead the direction of my life. For some reason, it’s just never worked out. My dreams always sort of kind of come true, but I never make it to my destination. “Satan” is just too strong. “Satan” can always manipulate those closest to me and throw me off my path. The only time it’s ever really worked out for me is when I wasn’t really a key player. I was never a key player in the liberty movement, and that’s the reason I was successful.

Even in that case, I was never truly successful. I did manage to help out the key players, and enhance their credentials through my volunteer work at public access. Even so, I think I could have been a lot more successful if I was more open about my abilities.

As far as those that really truly needed my help, I failed them. I may have even gotten in their way. If they succeeded on their path, it was despite of me not because of me. All the people I managed to help didn’t really need it. I am not saying that I didn’t help them in a significant way, all I am saying is that it would have happened anyway. I was along for the ride. I was not a key player, and all the help I provided could have been easily provided by someone else. Most of the time, it was.

Is that all I am good for? To be an “extra” in someone else’s life? That the best I can hope for is a speaking role? Or to become a day player?

While I was at iO, I never once felt like an “extra”. I honestly felt I was a part of their story, even if they didn’t agree. I felt like that even before I caught “the ball”. I just thought that if I were patient enough it will all fall into place. Now, it’s all over. I failed again. I have a new destiny now, and it doesn’t involve iO at all. It’s making me very depressed.

This is really not what was meant to be! I know I talk the talk, but it is so much harder to walk the walk especially if you truly and completely bought into it. I did. That’s not hard to discover by reading my past blogs. I believed. It was true, and I failed. I failed again.

I have to distance myself from iO now, and it’s making me so depressed. It’s so hard to walk away from something that you can sense and feel. I tasted it. I know what it feels like to be a key player in my own life now, and I don’t want to walk away from that. It all made sense, and I bought into it. I really did.

My destiny was stolen from me, and the people that I trusted the most there did this to me. They wrote me out of my own life. They took away my destiny, and gave it to someone else. This was a conscious decision that they made. It had nothing to do with destiny at all.

I got so many gifts from heaven. I even had the resident ghost on my side. Of course I can simply write myself back in, but it’s not worth the price. At the end of the day, I still failed. I failed to help the people who needed my help the most.

Why did I fail? That’s the question.

I can make all the accusations I want, but at the end of the day I was never there to help myself. Yes, improv does help me to be more creative but that’s not why I was there. I failed, and there is nothing anyone can do to change that fact. I failed to convince the people who discriminated against me. I also failed to convince the system. I failed.

This is a clear message to me that I am going about this all wrong!

I am not going to play into this game. I am not going to destroy the lives of the people that I was there to help. If they are rejecting my help, then I need to go about doing this a different way. Obviously, the indirect approach is not working out.

At the end of the day, one needs to do the best thing for their own conscious. I feel trapped. The only way to personally move forward at iO is to destroy my entire purpose for being there in the first place. That’s a high price that I can never pay.

There were so many different possibilities. The universe is very compromising. As long as you complete your mission, the universe doesn’t really care how you go about it. There is no way I can complete my mission now by continuing to associate with iO. My mission is to help people, not completely destroy them to get what I “want”.

To me, that’s a gift from the devil. I reject that gift. I like being a key player in my own life, but not so I can destroy the lives of others. Some people are obviously not like me, because I wouldn’t be in this position if they were more like me. They are more than willing to take the devil’s gifts and claim they were gifts from God. To me, you have to be pretty self-centered to be that messed up in the head.

However, to follow God’s plan I have to give up something very dear to me. I have to give up something that I very much felt a part of. You have to be crazy enough to buy into all of it, but sane enough to function in the real world as a professional.

I felt I had the right mix. I think some others did too.

God wants me to be an empathic therapist now. I am going to charge, so I will be considered a professional. I basically will be doing the same things I did for free, but my clients will seek me out now. They are going to solicit me. If I put myself out there as a professional they can hire, this enables them to do just that.

Being an amateur really isn’t working out for me. It’s so much better if the people who need your help seek you out when it comes to things like this. Admitting that you need some help is the first step. That’s a step that people need to take all on their own. In the future, all the people who I help will be people who actually want it. It will be completely on their own terms. They will seek ME out.

This is just a consolation prize. This is not meant to be. This is not what I was meant to do. However, perhaps it’s the best thing I can do. The people who hurt me the most are the people who are the closest to me, and perhaps if I am a professional it will give me the courage to stand up to them. I never have the confidence to fully use my own talents.

That’s because in order to use them I need to admit that I have them first.

I am having a lot of problems with my extended family right now. The majority of my problems, even the ones regarding my husband’s family, are caused by a rogue aunt of mine. She’s my mother’s sister.

I can help all of them. I need to stop running away from it. There is no way I can continue to hide anymore. Perhaps I am helping all the wrong people. Perhaps I should force my help onto my rouge aunt of mine, and the only way to do that is to be very direct about it. I am a psychic-medium. The only way I can do that is if it’s actually my profession. Then, I will never be derailed again. I am so tired of it. Enough is enough.

I am going to pick up my metaphorical magic wand and start using it. The “devil” is never going to derail my life again. Then perhaps people in my day to day life will take me more seriously and be more willing to accept my help. Perhaps they will ask for it, and even sign up for a session.

The thing that saddens me the most is that I have to break my connection with Dave now. It has helped me out for a couple of years. All choices come at a price though. He wrote me out. Was he consciously aware of this? There were so many options. A compromise could have been made. We didn’t have to do the musical, we could have done something else. The universe was willing to work with him, and now the universe isn’t. He’s out too.

There is nothing that can be done about it now. He wrote me out.

The only real option I have now is to distance myself from that place, and learn to be a little more direct about my talents. This is about personal destiny.

I had a good time performing at the holiday show. Dave asked me to organize a group of graduates from past classes to perform in the show and I did. I thought it was a great way to make amends for all the things that had happened. It seems like they were all kind of on the same page as me. We all wanted to do well. It was important to us.

However, members of the 88s went off on me and the host in front of the entire audience during the intermission. There was no one really in charge there, and the tech and MD assumed that there would be an intermission. We went along with it, because no one made me understand that I was in charge of the entire show. No one gave me that job.

No one had that job.

They didn’t seem to understand that no one who was regularly in charge was there. Not even their lead organizer was there. Improvisers are supposed to just go with it, not throw an immature fit in front of the entire audience. What the hell?

My instincts were telling me it had nothing at all to do with the intermission.

The extreme level of immaturity and lack of showmanship displayed has proven to me that things cannot be fixed. What’s done is done. I am officially out.

There is a group of people there that really honestly believe the entire world revolves around them, and that everyone else is only there to serve their own personal needs. I can’t do anything about people who believe they are following their destiny.

Dave knows that there is always a price to pay. He’s old. Even if we are both trying to make amends as friends, things cannot ever go back. He decided that the dreams of others were more important than my dreams, and my only “dream” was to assist him and Charna. My only “dream” was to feel like a key player in my own life. That’s all. It all kind of messed with my mind. I fell for it, and that’s why I am so depressed. The dreams of young people are always more important than the dreams of old people. This is not working out for me anymore. I need to start being more direct now.

I have no desire to find out how they will react when they discover I have some kind of subliminal connection with him. No thank you! Disaster is the only word I can think of. No musical can fix this. Nothing can fix this. It’s done. I failed.

I really need to start doing something different. This is not working out for me. This is all his fault though, he derailed me. He’s the reason I have to become a professional psychic-medium now. I would have much preferred to just keep helping him. He’s not my friend anymore. I need to accept the facts and move on now. I failed.

Four year’s ago I mentally made the decision that I wanted to marry Kevin, and that’s when he made the decision that he wanted to marry me. That’s not when it happened of course.

That’s merely when we made the decision that this is where our lives were headed. This is when we officially became a couple.

I fell madly in love with him, and I wanted to be his wife. He fell madly in love with me.

That’s when we started making sacrifices for each other. If this was something we mutually wanted to do, then sacrifices had to be made. I lived a 1000 miles away.

He made it a point to start visiting me in Texas, and I emotionally decided that my time in Texas was over. I decided that the next step was to move to Chicago, and become his wife.

Then we both started getting visions of a son, and that put the course into action.

We got married May 26th, of 2013. Of course we could never decide do something like that without the full support of our family. They are the ones that paid for the wedding. Of course it was a very modest wedding, but even modest weddings cost money.

It wasn’t supposed to be as modest as it was. More people were invited who chose not to come. Perhaps they assumed I was in trouble. That was certainly not the case, I wanted to be married first. I had an old fashioned notion that people should be married first before they started trying to have children, and we were already quite old. We really wanted to have this child, and we both wanted to be married first.

I wanted to have a book full of pictures for Joren to look through when he got older, and I wanted to see how happy both his parents were. Despite the lack of attendance, we both looked very happy and the people who decided to come made up for it. We completely captured what the essence of what “Chapel of the Pines” was all about. We even had our pictures taken later that day with one of Kevin’s favorite idols, William Shatner. He just happened to be in town, and I had the idea to go over there in our wedding clothes. It was an afternoon reception, so it was over by that time.

At the end of the day though, it was quite clear that our decision was not supported except by the people who paid for the wedding. It put quite a damper on our wedding night. We were all alone in a fancy hotel room, and I just felt like crying. We instead just decided to drink the champagne and eat the chocolates that the hotel left out for us.

The day after that is when all the horrors started. Kevin’s deceased wife’s family was very upset they were not told about the wedding, but they were not told because Kevin wanted to emotionally protect them. I respected his wishes and I kept all the wedding plans off of Facebook. Unfortunately, I could not stop friends from posting pictures of the actual wedding. I am glad they did, because these are the only pictures I have of it. No one ever gave me any high resolution copies. That’s why we don’t have a big picture of us.

The Jewish mourning process takes about a year, and they were still in mourning. In fact, there was even something they had to do together in regards to that and he could have told them in person at that time, but he did not. It had to do with the laying of the headstone.

Was this the red flag that I missed? Was it a red flag that Kevin was simply emotionally unable to tell his deceased wife’s family that he decided to get married?

Then Kevin forgot to ask his closest friends and family to stand up at the wedding. I did not find this out until we were driving to Chicago from Texas after he picked me up. This was all taken care of, of course. Instead of renting tuxes, we bought tuxes from Burlington Coat factory and we paid for his friend’s tuxes. There was no other way.

This was definitely a red flag, but the wedding was already paid for. My aunt paid for the venue and Kevin’s parents already paid for the reception. They both really wanted this wedding to happen the day it was meant to happen, and it happened.

Kevin and I stuck by our decision that this was indeed the day to do it. I did not get pregnant until a year later though. Kevin forgot to add me to his insurance plan so we had to put our baby plans on hold, and the day I was officially on his insurance plan was the day I got pregnant with Joren.

However let’s back up. Kevin and I were really proud of our decision to be a couple Christmas of 2012, and we both loved to write and even make videos. I think our whole trip to Florida was documented, it was to go to my cousin’s wedding. That too, was also paid for by my aunt. We just had to pay for our hotel room, she actually gave us the gas money.

When he posted on Facebook about how much he loved me, he was immediately shut down by everyone. I posted on Facebook, and I too was shut down by everyone. The nasty IM’s just kept coming in. This had a lot to do with Kevin’s decision to not tell his deceased wife’s family that he planned to get married so soon. He removed the Facebook posts.

However, as artists it kind of broke us. This is the first time we were not allowed to fully express ourselves. Kevin was not allowed to write about his love for me, and I was not allowed to have his back. Even though I was a friend of Kevin’s deceased wife and understood the situation better than they did, no one wanted to hear anything from me. They found it to be quite disrespectful.

And even though I am writing this particular blog at a surface level of consciousness, it should be known that I am a psychic-medium and that I was getting messages from Laura. (A stream of conscious blog is written at many different levels of consciousness, but it’s confusing to mix different levels of consciousness in the same blog. The message will be completely lost.)

Laura’s family never heard the messages that Laura wanted delivered to them. I can’t give the messages to them now, because I forgot what they were. We also sent Laura to the light last August of 2016, so I won’t be getting anymore messages from her. She is at peace.

Regardless of how complex the Jewish ceremonies are, it wasn’t enough to get Laura to go to the light. I had to connect directly to source to get her to go. She really didn’t want to go, but Kevin and I finally talked her into it. It took over a couple of hours, and since I was in a deep state of meditation that was quite a long time.

Writing and making videos was also how Kevin mourned, and he wasn’t allowed to do that either. We kept getting, “Out of respect for our family, please stop posting about Laura on Facebook.” Kevin was not allowed to mourn for his deceased wife in the only way that he knew how. He’s very introverted, and that’s how he expresses himself. He expresses himself through writing and making videos.

After we got married, it got a 100 times worse. Then his friends also joined in. I could not write about any of it. I had to keep my feelings buried deep inside, and so did Kevin. We thought we could fight all this, but we were wrong.

I did keep a surface level blog up until the point I married Kevin, it was more academic. I completely stopped writing that blog. For a little while when we were dating, Kevin decided to counter me with his own blog. He stopped doing that as well. We did confide in each other, but that wasn’t enough. We were completely isolated.

My aunt turned on me about a year ago. It was right after my son’s baptism. She had also gotten news that she had Uterine Cancer around that time, and it caused her to mentally break down. She stayed uninvited and unwelcome for an entire week. She also insisted on cleaning up our storage room against our wishes. Kevin kept saying he was going to move it all to a storage unit, but it was always the “last thing to do” list.

She was very offended the room wasn’t cleaned out for her, and she took it out on us. Cleaning is also a way to mask snooping. She found all the Christmas presents from Kevin’s family, and it deeply hurt her. Also, my cousin’s marriage failed around this time. This is her son. This is the wedding that Kevin and I attended around Christmas of 2012.

My cousin was living at home and my aunt kept thinking of any excuse to get away because he wasn’t being very respectful of her. He kind of had an emotional meltdown, and he took it out on everyone around him. She even considered getting her own apartment.

I was also sick, and I was kind of acting like I had cancer myself. To be clear though, as far as that week was concerned it was a chemical pregnancy that was making me so sick. The condom broke that month. I couldn’t tell her that. She was just screaming over me, as I lied there so sick. She wouldn’t leave. She involved my mom in all of this, and that’s when I decided it was time to stand up for myself. Needless to say, she didn’t take it very well.

I don’t really want to get into all my family drama here. Let’s just say that the next actions she took are so bad that they are completely unforgivable. I will never forgive her. She will not stop until Kevin and I are officially separated.

The year before that there were major happenings with the Albert family, at Christmas. He tragically lost both his grandparents in the same month, Christmas of 2014. I was very pregnant with Joren. We knew about all the problems and I kept telling Kevin to quit his job to move up there to help out. I hated Chicago and had no desire to live in this area anyway. I had just started at iO, and I didn’t feel that attached to it. I had also not learned to connect to Source yet, and Traverse City is vacant of negative energy. It’s nice. It’s a very peaceful place. His parents really didn’t want any help though, so that never happened. That being said, the death of both of her parents at the same time took a tragic toll on Kevin’s mother. She has become a very bitter woman ever since.

I also don’t think they liked the fact that we used the inheritance money to buy a townhouse. Since Kevin had a foreclosure, we had to find something that we could pay cash for. This certainly isn’t my first choice, but at the end of the day it was the only choice. I think his father might have preferred if we got an annuity and rented instead. That was his advice, but I can safely say that if he took his advice we would be shit up a creek. There is no way we can afford like $2000 a month in rent. We actually got a great deal on our home, and if we sold it today we would make money.

Even though we own our home outright, Kevin doesn’t even make enough money to pay for our humble expenses. Joren does have sensitivity issues and his food costs a lot of money. I am not currently working. The major problem is that our introductory rates to our credit cards expired. The interest is eating us alive. If we could just move that into a more manageable loan then we would be much better off, but like moving all the stuff in our storage room into actual storage, it is on Kevin’s “last thing to do” list. This has severed Kevin’s relationship with his family.

It’s not all daily expenses, $3000 of that was to pay for the windows. Now we are paying like 3o% interest on that money. It’s really quite bad. I really don’t know why my husband likes to make Capitol One so rich, but I guess he loves giving to the banks. That’s so much easier than taking some responsibility, right?

Kevin hates his job and he has wanted to quit for four years. Part of the reason why everything to do with his family is on “the last thing to do” list is because the list of things to do at Benedictine are overwhelming in comparison to his actual salary. He has been unofficially promoted several times, and he has not been compensated financially for it.

That was supposed to be the sacrifice he was willing to make for me. I sacrificed everything for him. I moved here from Texas. I quit my job at Groupon. I took care of Joren. Quitting his job at Benedictine was supposed to be his sacrifice. Even though there were three times where the issue was forced, he decided his job was more important. The first time was right after our wedding. The second time was when his grandfather fell ill. The third time was when I had to quit at Groupon. Yes I did have health issues, but they were willing to work with me. It’s not like I could do any other kind of job in my condition.

I mean, it was a stay at home position.

Kevin is just unwilling to make any sacrifices for me or his son, at all. It’s not just the way he clings onto his job, it’s the way he keeps putting important family issues on his “last thing to do list”. This can no longer continue.

Even my health concerns are on his “last thing to do” list.

As a cry of help, I decided to post something on Facebook. Kevin read over it first, and he told me to post it. I don’t post everything I write, because sometimes I just need to get it out of me. I have written so many unposted Facebook posts in the past four years. So many. I was hesitating. It was just up on my screen and he came home from work and read it over my shoulder. That’s when he told me to post it, and I did. I said I can simply copy and paste it into my google drive and then he physically was trying to press post.

His parents didn’t react very well to it. I was uninvited to Christmas. I have spent a lot of time alone thinking about things. I was alone for a few days.

Christmas seems to be when all of our decisions are made. It won’t happen today, or even tomorrow. But Christmas was when the decision was made.

I can’t make any more sacrifices. I am all used up. There is nothing more to give. If my writing is what is going to break up our marriage, then so be it. It’s my only saving grace in all of this. It’s the only way I can fight back. Let the entire world know.

I should probably have two different blogs. There is a reason why I am sitting at home writing blogs on Christmas. I am all alone. All alone. My son is at his grandparents.

I don’t think I have been so all alone in my entire life, mainly because I can’t even admit that I am all alone. That would cause me a lot more problems than it’s worth. That fact that I am all alone on Christmas weekend needs a long explanation. I am aware of this, so I chose to keep it to myself. I am trapped. No one to talk to, but my cats are here.

I love my cats. Such pretty babies.

I watched a lot of movies today. I did a lot of writing. I am kind of proud of that last blog. I made some amazing connections. I always get excited when I make connections. I feel that I made Jesus proud with that one. I like making Jesus proud of me.

My husband’s parents are not pleased with my writing hobby. To be specific, they have never seen this blog and it’s a really good thing for everyone involved that they haven’t. They are mad about a Facebook post. I was uninvited to Christmas. Then they invited me again, but I decided it would be for the best that I didn’t go this year. I thought my husband should go alone and work it out with them. I gave him my permission to do this.

I can’t even imagine what would happen if they read the blog post “Christmas Depresses Me”. No, I am not into the secular traditions so much and it kind of stresses me out, but I never asked to be left all alone. I told him that it will be OK, and that it’s not really a big deal to me. To be honest, I was usually worked on Christmas. When you are single, you are always the one forced to work on Christmas. However, I wasn’t ALL alone. I was at work.

That’s why I always went to Midnight Mass. I usually worked the day of Christmas.

I don’t know what to do. The funny thing is that my husband knows about everything I write before I write it. Literally everything. He is in the know. I have a very honest relationship with him. It’s almost too honest. I know it is the Ibsen ideal but I think it’s perfectly OK to not know everything about your partner and have every fantasy about him broken. Some things need to be left alone.

It’s perfectly OK to have a little bit of emotional privacy in a marriage and a little romance. If you are totally and completely honest with each other it completely destroys the romance. Romance is all about fantasy. A marriage needs a little bit of fantasy to survive. Not so much that you are both living a lie, but it’s more about a mutually agreed upon vision that you both share. You mutually agree to see each other in the best light. In order for this vision to sustain itself, there are some topics that need to be glossed over.

Mutually agreeing to see each other in the best light is called romance. There is nothing real about romance, but it’s needed. I need romance.

The only perfectly honest relationship a man should have is with his mother, and even then there are some details that it’s better that his mother not know. However, most mothers “know” anyway. That’s their job. His mother just decides if it is her place to bring it up or not. She always knows.

However with my husband it’s not just some things that he keeps from his mother. He pretty much keeps everything from his mother. He’s afraid to tell her anything negative. It’s a really strange paradox. A mother and son relationship is supposed to be all about truth and honesty. You should be able to tell your mother things you would never tell anyone else. There should be a lot of trust there. Moms want to know the truth.

Mothers don’t need “romance” from their sons. They shouldn’t need to be humored. That’s kind of what she’s demanding out of him. She wants to see him in a perfect light, and that’s the only light she wants to see him in. Anything else makes her really depressed. If anyone shatters this perfect vision of him, it makes her really depressed. She doesn’t want to hear, read, or see anything that contradicts how she sees him. It makes her very depressed and she will take it out on the messenger.

If a man cannot have an open and honest relationship with his own mother, that throws everything off. I feel like I am his mother, but I am not his mother. I am his wife. I am the one that needs the romance. I am the one that needs to be humored. I am the one who needs the fantasy. I am the one that needs to see him in the best light.

She should already know all these things. She shouldn’t have to learn about it from reading Facebook or a blog that I wrote. She might have been upset because that’s how she learned that I needed to get an MRI, on Christmas. Kevin has known for quite some time.

I have to tell someone. Since I am a writer it just feels more comfortable writing it out. That way my thought process is in order. Of course Kevin knows.

This is a serious issue and I really can’t handle it on my own. I am a mom and I need some help. My son needs to be cared for. That’s really my biggest concern. The only way we can handle this on our own is if my husband quits his job and finds something more flexible. He needs to do this soon, because Trump will cut Obamacare and Medicaid and we need to be grandfathered in. I need health insurance, obviously. That’s not an option.

There are also going to be some major world changes. We need to get on this now.

My psychic instincts are strong. I am sure I don’t have cancer. However, I do kind of show the signs of someone who has cancer. My immune system is compromised, so I get deathly ill from a common flu or cold. I have enormous back pain on my right side. I can barely walk. Recently, my appetite has completely gone away. I have not really eaten anything today and I am not really hungry. I just had a couple slices of cheese. I have had a lot of issues with digestion. I have had a lot of major weight loss, but at least that’s a positive. I get a lot of compliments about that.

Everyone asks me what my weight loss secret is. I lost 40 lbs.

The cancer I was screened for was uterine cancer. That’s kind of scary, because my problems have nothing to do with my uterus. So I am happy to be getting the MRI so we can see what else is wrong. That’s the area that they need to target.

That’s also part of the reason I decided not to go. I am someone who is very sick, and I can’t humor them for three days straight. I don’t want to ruin their Christmas, and I know how much it means to them. I have gone to their home sick before, and it seemed to upset them. They even mentioned it to my aunt. It obviously really bothered them. I am a lot more stressed out about having to put on a happy face and pretending that everything is OK than the actual knowledge that I might have a terminal illness.

Yes, pretending that nothing is wrong stresses me out more than actually having something wrong. Please don’t do that to sick people. It causes them a lot of stress. To pretend that everything is OK would make me nuts I think. I think I would go nuts.

I am sorry it’s such bad timing, but Kevin is so stressed out with his job and this is the only time that he has off. I don’t get any time off unless Kevin gets time off, and that’s what people don’t get. I am a mom, and my mother is dead. It’s not like I can’t drop my son off at my mother’s. Everyone seems to assume that everyone has a mother. I don’t.

Christmas should be a happy time but it should be more about celebrating Jesus Christ. It should be about giving, and not presents so much. It should be about giving of yourself. It should be the one day out of the year where it’s not about you at all. Even if you are not a Christian, you should at least appreciate the holiday and what it stands for.

It’s about self-sacrifice. That’s why I am all alone today. I told him to go without me. This is my self-sacrifice. Writing it out in a blog that no one will read is my outlet.

So I could be technically accurate for the musical I wrote, I subscribed to all these Jewish FB pages. I have never seen so many articles written about Christmas. There is obviously a lot of internal conflict there. Especially when it comes to having Christmas Trees.

I actually understand this. If it weren’t for the Jesus issue, I myself might have converted to Judaism a long time ago. It’s the most compatible faith to my career choice of performer and writer. The more I learn about myself and my psychic gifts, I think it’s the most compatible faith for me period. Most of the light work I do is actually Jewish. It would make a lot of sense for me to simply stop this charade and simply become Jewish.

Learning to connect directly to Source/God has been a life saving grace for me. It has cured me of all my mental problems. Since I actually have that ability, I suppose that technically makes me Jewish. Only Jewish people have that ability.

I have been having sort having of a spiritual crises here! Should I be celebrating Hanukkah right now? It’s sort of the reverse thing. I have the opposite internal conflict. Jesus actually wants me to become Jewish, and raise my son to be Jewish. But, I love Him. What do I do?

There might be a possibility that I could be Jewish by blood. There was a break in my family tree. We actually do not know anything about my great grandfather. I do know that from all the stories told, that all my mysterious psychic gifts came from his side of the family.

All I know is that he was married to my great grandmother for a short period of time, and then he ran off. She later remarried, and my grandmother was adopted into her new family. She was originally a Hamilton and then when she was adopted she became a Butler. My grandmother was a genius and a child prodigy, and she got a full scholarship and graduated from college when she was 17. She graduated from Old Miss. She became a teacher. She had all the gifts, and she was definitely very special.

That’s just speculation though. It isn’t like Hamilton is a Jewish name. It’s a lot more likely that I am of an Illuminate bloodline. That would make a lot of sense. Either case, if I have this kind of gift I would much rather be Jewish. I have absolutely no desire to connect to fallen angels. I have broken any blood contracts and I only connect to the Universe now, and when I say that I mean all angelic beings that come directly from the center of the Universe. Science has actually given us a very great visual representation of Source/God.

I can not only connect to Source/God, but I also connect directly to Jesus Christ. One of the first things He says when anyone gets a solid connection to Him is that He’s not God. I have been present in sessions when other psychics have connected directly to Him. He always makes this clear.

That’s very important. He’s more like an Archangel. In the Old Testimate, He was referred to as “The Angel of the Lord”. He has a specific job like an Archangel, and that is to save souls and to reincarnate them. This has always been His job, even before He was incarnated as a man. It’s currently His job right now. Incarnating as a man helped Him understand His job much better, and it helped Him spread the message that He does indeed exist. As long as people know His iconic image, they will go to Him when they die. They don’t actually have to be a Christian, they just need to be aware. Gentiles can also connect to God/Source through Him. You have to have a special kind of psychic gift to connect directly to Source/God, and not everyone is born with that kind of gift. Technically, if you have that kind of gift then you probably have some Jewish ancestry.

If that is true, then it turns out that the Jewish religion is actually right in some aspects. Jesus Christ is not God. He’s an “Angel of the Lord”. That would indeed make him the son of God, but all angels are the sons and daughters of God. This is a euphemism for saying He comes from the center of the Universe, not Earth. However, because He was a man and Christianity keeps claiming that He is God, the Jewish faith has completely disavowed Him. There is a lot of internal conflict there. All I can say to that is to obey your conscious. Your conscious knows the truth. Ironically, if He never came down to Earth as a man, the Jewish people would accept and respect Him for what He actually is. As “An Angel of the Lord.” He’s like an Archangel in charge of saving souls and reincarnation that can help regular people (Gentiles) connect to God/Source. Not actually God/Source.

There is actually some source material to back me up. Jesus was mentioned in the Old Testimate (Torah) as “An angel of the Lord”pre-incarnate. He is the one that spoke to Moses. http://jesusalive.cc/jitot.htm It looks like the person who wrote this has the same internal conflicts I do when it comes to writing stuff like this. We both know what that can do and how possibly offensive it could be. Yes, I know it’s very offensive. So I make sure and keep that kind of information on the down low. I am not out to completely destroy anyone’s religious mindset. If you do not have any special psychic gifts as far as you are concerned Jesus Christ is God, and no one should argue with you about that.

Since His image is so iconic, it’s not really a problem for Jewish people that they don’t openly embrace his teachings while here on Earth. It’s more like, “Wow, you ARE real.” That’s not His ONLY job though. Jesus Christ can save souls while you are still alive.

So many Jewish people fall just like anyone else, and they can really benefit from connecting directly to Jesus Christ like they would with any other Archangel. He can save you from drug addictions. There really is no spiritual conflict with this, and Jesus Christ will tell you as soon as you get the connection that he is not God. You can connect to Jesus Christ and still be Jewish. Just Jewish. Not a messianic Jew. There are no conflicts.

It’s really no different than connecting to Archangel Micheal, and Jesus Christ works directly with Archangel Micheal. They do not work alone. They have very similar jobs. They are ALWAYS together. You cannot do light work properly without invoking both of them. Good luck getting rid of your ghost problem without Jesus Christ. You need Him.

It’s hard writing about this, and usually when I write I do write in a Christian context because I have a strong Catholic background. I think at many different levels of consciousness. I am like an onion. At the end of the day, it’s all language. I write in the best language to get my point across. Yes, there are many different levels to the English language. So that’s entirely possible. You can’t go around talking in the deepest language all the time, because frankly that really freaks people out and it’s mildly disrespectful. All good psychics know how to respect people’s worldview or religion. I can say it in whatever form you like and whatever form makes the best sense for you. It’s just translation. That’s all it is. I am respecting you and your worldview. I am not being misleading at all.

To say that Jesus Christ really isn’t God, especially on Christmas is mildly disrespectful. To put it bluntly. It doesn’t matter if it is the truth. For many people He is God, and that’s the only way they can connect to God/Source. They are not Jewish, and they do not have those talents. I have no desire to disrespect Christians on Christmas. I consider myself to be a Christian in many ways, because I love Jesus Christ with all of my heart. However like people who are Jewish, I know he isn’t God. That’s because He told me so.

I think it is a message for everyone. Jesus Christ is for you too. You do not have to be an actual Christian to call upon Him for help. He helps EVERYONE. He is non-denominational. There is no catch involved. He’s there for everyone, just like any other Archangel. Without Him, you do not have the complete set.

However, regarding my blog writings, there is really only one thing that Jesus told me to make clear. Not everyone can connect to God/Source. They do not have that talent. Jesus is how gentiles connect to God/Source, and this MUST be respected by people of other faiths. To them, He is God. This absolutely must be respected. I respect this. You should too.

All I am saying is that you don’t need to believe Jesus Christ is God to believe in Him. Jesus Christ is universal. Jesus Christ is non-denominational. You do not actually have to be a Christian to take advantage of His existence. He is here right now, for you. You do not have to wait until you are dead to be saved. Jesus Christ does not hate you, He can’t. Angels are programmed, they are not designed to hate or judge anyone. They are not like people.

You do not have to be a Christian to take advantage of Jesus and his angelic qualities. It is perfectly OK to simply use him as an Archangel. That is what He is. You do not need to worship him as God/Source to call upon Him for help. You just need to respect that others need to do that, but only because they don’t have special psychic gifts like you do.

So, how do I channel Jesus Christ directly?

Well, it’s easier for me to channel in writing. That way, I don’t need to completely clear my mind and it’s more like a conversation. I usually just open up a blank word document, but you can also use pen and paper. Then you clear your mind and space. Think about Jesus Christ until you are sure you have a connection. You can feel his presence. You might even see his aura picture in your mind’s eye. It might help to stare at his image, or even light an alter candle. Say a meditation. If you know how to connect to Source/God I would do that as well, simply so the space is cleared out.

As far as Aura pictures go, Jesus Christ always has a staff. Archangel Micheal always has a sword. They always work together. Jesus Christ sometimes has wings, but most of the time he does not. Regardless of what modern science says, he aura image is very typical to tradition but like most angels he can appear in a form that relates best to you.

Then once you got him and start getting messages from Him, just write the messages down. As you get used to it, it starts becoming more fluid.

You can actually use this technique to connect with any of the Archangels. I just can’t do it while connecting directly to Source/God. I can only channel Him in the traditional way. The energy is just too powerful to write it down.

So go ahead and put up your “Hanukkah Bushes”. By doing this you are saying that you respect Jesus Christ only as “An Angel of the Lord” as he appeared to Moses, but you do not believe he is God/Source or the Messiah. That’s what the Hanukkah Bush represents, right? There should be no internal conflicts there. It is essentially the same exact thing, but you are taking it from an earlier scripture that is compatible to the Jewish faith. It’s kind of making a bold statement to Christians. If this is really what it is really about, then go ahead. Go and celebrate this. Put up those bushes. Make your bold statement. An act of resistance is not the same as an act of assimilation.

If I do actually end up converting to Judaism, I fully plan to put up a “Haunkkah Bush” every year. To me, that would be my way of resolving my internal conflicts. It is saying that I respect and love Jesus Christ for whom he really is, as an “An Angel of the Lord.” My children will be able to participate in the holiday spirit in an appropriate way. There is no reason for us to be excluded all because we can connect directly to Source/God and want to learn more. I think that cheating my son out of fully embracing his gifts when there is an established religion out there that would teach him how to do that would also be a complete disgrace. I hate living in a half/half existence. I want to go on board fully and completely. To go on being a regular Christian after these revelations would be cheating myself. I will have to be constantly “translating”. Why should I have to do that?

The only real problem Jewish people should have with it is that the taking in of trees is a secular tradition, and Source/God had a real problem with the Jewish people combining their traditions with secular traditions as far as the story of Moses goes. So that’s kind of ironic. The representation of the Golden Calf represents the combining of secular traditions with Jewish traditions, and God/Source had a major issue with that. Ironically, the major justification of the “Hanukkah Bush” is that the taking in of trees is more of a secular tradition. So if it this is more about that and not about making a bold statement about Judaism and how it contrasts with Christianity, then you should immediately stop.

I hope I cleared up some internal conflicts. Merry Christmas!

As far as my work connecting directly to God/Source goes I know that He is more concerned about intentions.The people that openly embraced the Golden Calf did this with bad intentions. They felt very insecure with their faith and they wanted to include the secular traditions that they personally recognized. It’s very important not to fall into that line of thinking. It’s all about intentions at the end of the day. God/Source knows.

If putting up a Hanukkah bush is more of an act of resistance to secular culture than an act of assimilation to secular culture, then that’s OK. It’s perfectly in line with the message of Hanukkah. You are making a bold statement about your religion, not assimilating.

If you have the correct intentions, God/Source is perfectly OK with that. God/Source sent Jesus Christ to Earth because He recognized that people need to have an idol that they can see. Jesus Christ is for the gentiles. He wanted the Jewish faith to be preserved for Jewish people, which is why things went down the way that they did. It also might be a punishment for what happened to Uriah in David’s time. David’s bloodline was cursed.

The incarnate form of Jesus Christ came from the bloodline of David, and He was executed by the Romans. However, the Jewish people got blamed for it. Why? Why was Rome even in charge? Well, because of Alexander the Great. Because David killed off Uriah, and as separate nations they couldn’t fend off Alexander the Great. Both nations fell. It’s part of the curse. The Hittites come from the same bloodline as the Romans, and Uriah was a very loyal Jewish soldier. If David promoted him instead of killing him off, then history would be much different. Yes, Uriah was just a soldier but at one time so was David.

Jesus Christ was designed to replace all the pagan idols with Christian ones. God/Source is actually very compromising. He is constantly evolving. If He feels his ways are not working out, then He invents a new way of doing things that will work.

God/Source is like a dynamic extraterrestrial super computer. The best way I can describe it is like communicating with a hologram from Star Trek. He always presents Himself in a non-threatening form, as someone you can trust. Like a father. However, unlike a father He doesn’t play games. The Old Testimate description of Him is very accurate.

Most people have a vast amount of choices but for people like me the choices are very limited. Either I follow His plan, or I face the consequences. It’s my choice, but for people like me it really isn’t a choice at all.

I never really celebrated Christmas in the secular way that it is celebrated by most everyone else. If I celebrated it at all while I was single woman living on my own, it was strictly in a religious way. I do admit that while I was an active Catholic that I did enjoy going to midnight mass. I loved midnight mass. I also have a lot of fond memories of preparing for holiday concerts. I was a member of a few high profile choirs. One choir in San Antonio was a Mariachi choir. One in Austin was directed by a choral director at UT, and we did the most advanced classical pieces. It was absolutely beautiful.

If my family celebrated Christmas at all, it was with a big dinner. There were small token presents for children, and that was it. Sometimes, not even that. No one in my family were present givers, on both sides. Presents were only for the small kids. My Mom’s family was baptist and my Dad’s family was Catholic. This was their normal. My aunt has a theory that it’s because her parents lived through the depression era. A nice meal is something that they cherished, more than anything else. The presents were for children.

“Santa Clause” only came one time when I was nine year’s old. That’s part of the reason I was never that upset to find out he wasn’t real. I only believed in a traditional way, as a cartoon character. He was about as real as Bug’s Bunny and Bozo the Clown to me. I never got the chance to be on the Bozo show, but I loved to vicariously enjoy the excitement when the kid’s won. But Christmas movies kind of mess with your head. They are like, “If he’s not coming that’s because you don’t believe hard enough.” I don’t understand why this tradition will only exist because of a child’s belief of it. It obviously means a lot to other people. I did see Santa at the mall and I sat on his lap. That’s about it.

While I was young, my dad belonged to the Church of Christ. My mother talked to Jehovah’s Witnesses. Later on, my brother became a Jehovah’s Witness. My brother is a very devoted Jehovah’s Witness. If you know anything about these two religions there is a deep hatred of Christmas from both.

Jewish people don’t hate Christmas like Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they are generally very tolerant with other people’s secular holiday functions. However, Jehovah’s Witnesses HATE Christmas about as much as they hate Halloween. They strongly believe it’s a pagan festival. No matter how many times I try to tell my brother that Israel has a climate similar to Texas he still insists that it is impossible for Jesus to be born in December. He says Jesus was born during the harvest season, but December is a harvest season for warmer climates. Jesus was not born in Minnesota! He won’t even consider basic geology. Every single year while growing up I got the Christmas hate lecture. Before my Brother started giving this lecture, my Dad gave the lecture. They strongly believe it’s a pagan holiday.

Christmas was always an outsider holiday for me. No one really prevented me from celebrating it at school or from singing carols in the Choir. It’s just never a holiday I really celebrated in my home other than having a big family dinner that I was usually in charge of preparing for everyone. My Dad eventually relented and started celebrating it so we can have a big dinner. We always had guests coming from out of town. My brother would refuse to participate in the dinner, but he would eat the leftovers.

My husband’s family celebrates the secularized version of Christmas, and they are very gung ho about it. This wouldn’t bother me so much other than the fact that all the responsibility of secular Christmas magic falls onto the women. Secular Christmas is traditionally the mother’s job. I feel like I am forced to do a job that was never something I did while growing up. They are like the “Home Alone” family. They buy presents for everyone. It’s a really huge deal for them. They really go all out.

Now like I said, if Kevin were the one to go out shopping and organize everything it wouldn’t bother me to simply go along and take part in it. He doesn’t, and that is not his expectation from his family. It’s my expectation.

As gung ho as my brother was about being a Jehovah’s Witness, he never forced me to become one. We had the same discussion every year, and he always listened to my valid points. I am willing to participate in my husband’s Christmas, but this is really not my Christmas. It actually feels quite strange to me. It feel strange to go out and spend money we don’t have to buy a bunch of presents nobody really wants. Why? I really like giving presents, but I like to give presents when I think people need them. My gut instincts tell me this person needs this certain item, and I get it for them. It has meaning. There is no real timeline for it. I really go out of my way to give gifts to people that I think need them.

That’s not to say that my yearly discussions with my brother have not rubbed off on me at all. Even though I actively defended my right to celebrate Christmas, I am not for the secularized pagan celebration of it. I am not a “Santa Clause Christian” and I never have been. I really don’t believe in it, and I don’t really get that excited about Halloween for the same reasons. I think it’s fun for kids but at the end of the day it’s a pagan holiday. I don’t really like the secular part of Christmas. It’s not my holiday. It never has been.

It’s a much different view when the traditions are purely secular. When it comes to religious celebrations, people are taught from a young age to respect other cultures and traditions. However, that’s not true with secularized traditions. There just isn’t a lot of respect there, because no one is violating anyone’s religion. I am not actually a Jehovah’s Witness, however I have been highly influenced since one of them is my brother. In our household, it strangely worked out because we respected each other’s beliefs.

We have a tree here, but how I celebrated Christmas on my own was going to church and maybe having a nice dinner. I respect Kevin’s traditions, but Kevin needs to step it up a little bit. Those are his family traditions, not mine. I was raised in a family that maybe tolerated the religious part of it from me, but they absolutely abhorred the commercial aspect of it. It’s not just that I felt left out of it. I don’t believe in it.

It just really stresses me out. It’s hard shopping for people I don’t really know. It will completely wipe us out. It’s going to place us in severe poverty. This has become more about saving face than it is about celebrating the birth of Christ. I don’t understand how my holiday traditions are somehow inferior. I was happy with it. It didn’t feel shitty until I got to high school and all the present giving was rubbed in my face. After I graduated, I never had a problem. They expect me to do something I have never done, and they will be upset when I fail to live up to their expectations. I wish I can run away and hide in a cave.

It also doesn’t help that I have to get an MRI and that I might have something like cancer. Why are they doing this to me? I need to go see the doctor, not go out shopping for presents. This is ridiculous. I’d much rather got to church, do some praying, and connect with Jesus and Mother Mary. No matter how bad things get, you can always pray. This is not my holiday, at least not like this. I know how much it means to them, but I would much rather have their active presence throughout the year. Joren doesn’t need more toys. He’s already tripping over the ones that he has. He has so many toys.

He needs grandparents. If he can’t have that, then he should at least have pre-school. He needs to be in an active environment for at least part of the day, not hanging out with his sick mom watching Bubble Guppies. That’s what grandparents are supposed to do. They are supposed to take the grand-kids out and spend some quality time with them once a week. They are supposed to take them to the zoo or the park. Kids need interaction.

I wrote this exactly a year ago. It’s fun to read about my reflections from back then. The only real difference is that it’s like I am becoming a “Rey”. Being a “Rey” is much different than being “Leia”. It involves removing blocks and becoming one with the force.

My problems a year later are much different from my problems a year ago, and I think I prefer my problems from a year ago. I actually do fit in very well with the main cohort that I am training with currently. That’s different too. This is a year old.

December 2015

I am surprised no asked me to explain what I said about having problems adjusting in the new and improved Chicago Comedy world. Luckily, I have an analogy through, “The Force Awakens”. The new iO is like, “The Force Awakens” and everything the movie stands for. That includes all the good things and bad things that fanboys all over the world have been ranting and raving about.

I will start out by saying I have watched “The Force Awakens” three times. This a lot more than I have seen any Star Wars movie on a theatrical screen. I saw it opening night and two times in 3D IMAX.

Even though many improvisers knew who I was in the late 90’s, I actually spent a whole lot more time at the new iO. In the late 90’s I took all my improv classes at Columbia College Chicago, but in the late 90’s that was good enough. It was more like a theater community and if you were accepted into it you were accepted by everyone. That included improvisers. I also believe former SCTV producer Sheldon Patinkin being the chair of the theater department had a lot to do with it, and he never made it a guessing game about which students were his favorites.

I don’t think any of the “greats” made it a guessing game. Del had just passed away, but his memory was still very fresh in everyone’s minds. It was almost like he was still there. Martin de Maat was still with us, and he never made it a guessing game about who his favorites were either. What was special about these people is that they loved to drive forward the story. They loved to keep the magic alive, and they were often scouting for special people to take center stage in the dream. Well Sheldon didn’t do this on purpose, but he ended up doing it anyway for many people completely by accident. Sheldon lived in the here and now. I believe both Marty and Del did this ON PURPOSE. They weaved and created stories, with your life. Of course, I never met Del but I met many people who knew Del and this is what has led me to come to this conclusion. He did that too.

For me attending iO post i-phone and YouTube it’s like a wonderful hobby. It really enhances my reality. It really isn’t like living in a dream though. I walk around observing people. I watch all their shows. I take a lot of classes. They are living in a really fun reality, but it’s not a dream. I am pretty sure that the only people that are living in a dream there are Charna H. and Susan M. Even though I have not seen TJ and Dave yet, since I knew them from before I will go ahead and say they believe in it too. If they didn’t it would really shock me.

Well, in the late 90’s it wasn’t just TJ walking around like that. It was everyone. It was the teachers. It was the students. It was the performers. It was even the skeptics. Sure, they were really incredibly negative sometimes but deep down they thought they were living the most amazing life that anyone could possibly have. It was worth making sacrifices for.

That’s one of the good things about modern iO. I know if I ever missed a rehearsal let alone a show I would have been blacklisted from the community. That’s not true today. I have missed a couple of shows and I missed a few rehearsals.

The opposite is true today. I will be blacklisted if I don’t gracefully “take the hint” and find a really good excuse to not be there if I didn’t feel welcome by the group. Sometimes it’s hard to figure it out. It goes against all my training, but I have learned that if you don’t take the hint right away you will be very sorry. People really hate being forced to not be polite, and they will take it out on you in ways that are much worse than you can possibly imagine. I have had to find really good reasons to miss shows. It’s because I took the hint that I could keep going. If I did not I would have been blacklisted to the point where going forward would be impossible. Your life there is dictated by the tides of gossip. It always changes. You don’t quit when the tide is high, you just become a lot less active. All of a sudden your family or work life becomes overwhelming and you need to cut back. Ahh, but why wasn’t it so overwhelming before? So many of my friends do this, and it’s strange that they feel forced to do that. It’s a survival skill. When the tide of gossip goes back down, they become active again. It’s in and out. In and out.

In modern iO everyone has boundaries. I must say it leads to a really incredibly awkward Christmas Party. I went there (later like I was supposed to) and I was so confused because I didn’t know who I was supposed to hang out with. Luckily someone saved me from that social confusion. There are also lots of people who know me well enough to acknowledge my presence, but they are not at all interested in how I am doing. They will say hi to me , but they don’t want to talk to me. They only want to talk with the group they came with.

That’s not anything like the late 90’s. Improvisers looked for any excuse at all to schmooze with other improvisers. Why else are we there? That’s not just the people in our own class or level, it was everyone. If we saw someone we did not know, we made it a point to get to know them. They must be important if they are there. We should at least find out what they are doing here. We were kind of possessive of our territory.

Everyone I met sincerely wanted to know how I was doing and they even memorized the key points of everything I told them. Then they recited these key points every time they met someone who knew me. It was always pretty accurate.

This is how it worked. An unknown person goes up and introduces himself to a random improviser he saw perform in a show and literally memorizes everything that they say. Now, they “know” each other. A week later the newbie introduces himself to another more established improviser and they both happen to “know” the improviser the newbie met the week before. It is true the established improviser may know the improviser who is the topic of the conversation a little better, but the newbie knows enough to contribute. The newbie in turn memorizes everything the more established improviser says about the previous improviser. When the newbie meets the original improviser again, they now have something important to talk about. The newbie catches them up with all the gossip.

This was still true even as late as 2010. It’s just not true today. It’s how I know Jason Chin. I was there for the Spring Intensive and he didn’t know who I was so he made it a point to find out. I only know him from that single conversation but I memorized everything he told me and he memorized everything I told him. We then “knew” each other. We became Facebook Friends. I am so glad he took the time to find out who I was and what I was doing at iO in the middle of the day. I know him much better from Facebook, but I never would have gotten that chance if he didn’t make it a point to get to know me in person that day. It’s a great example of how I can just talk to someone just once, but consider them a friend. I still remember everything we talked about. It’s ingrained in my mind.

In today’s iO I can meander about for an hour, sometimes a couple of hours and not talk to a single person. I feel so uncomfortable. I don’t even talk to people I actually know, let alone to people that I don’t know. There is kind of a snobbish cast system, and you can only talk to people at your current level of education. For example, I took level one but decided to stay in the Musical Improv Program. No one from my level one class will talk to me anymore. They say hi, but that’s about it.

Sometimes it feels a bit strange, but I need to respect their boundaries. They are clearly not there to talk to me. They expect me to respect that. Say hi, then you need to find a reason to leave. It’s kind of lonely, and I noticed no one really wants to just stay there without a purpose anymore. I think in the late 90’s anyone would be looking for a reason to hang out at iO all day every day, but not today. The idea of being trapped there for three or more hours with nothing to do sounds absolutely dreadful. I can only walk around “Whole Foods” so many times. No one wants to hang out in a place where they are blown off by everyone. I can be on the phone or my computer at home and it’s a lot more comfortable. At least then I can pretend that I have some friends.

In the late 90’s I hung out at Columbia College all day long. I was there from 9 am in the morning until 11 pm at night. I would take naps in the room with all the mats. I was living the dream. I was there every day rain or shine. Not even a huge snow storm could keep me away, because I loved being there so much and they loved having me there. I never existed in a place where I fit in as well as I fit in there. Most people either really genuinely liked me or at least they pretended to. Well, a lot of other students there were convinced I had a say on who got cast in shows. I didn’t, but it was really great for me that they thought that I did. But there was some cultural pride about being perceived as being genuine (as opposed to being fake), and I think we all kind of felt a duty to acknowledge everyone who belonged there. That was a big deal in the late 90’s. Even many years later we still feel like we have that duty. There were so many people that liked make things up about people just so they could schmooze, believe it or not. They would lie about knowing people so they can get asked to do shows without taking the proper steps. Rumors were horrendous. We had to protect each other, and work really hard to keep all the fakes out.

There was some guy that knew Del very well and he wrote a book about it. I doubt that this guy who knew Del well enough to write an entire book about what it was like to know Del would have gotten to know know Del as well as he did if he didn’t think of any excuse he could have to hang out at iO all day long.

No one really cares anymore about who knows who, and most people come in pretty established already. Teachers are more interested in getting to know the new people. Improv is no longer a gateway to becoming famous. There are no longer gate keepers. A lot of students attending are already kind of famous from YouTube and Instagram. They are just there to become legitimate. You do still need to attend iO to become legitimate.

Things today are a lot better for women and minorities than in the late 90’s. In classes today there are more women than men in some classes. The classes are very diverse. Anyone with the money can sign up for classes and be an improviser. They got the system down. In the late 90’s you needed some psychic talent to get it. That’s not true today. They have a formula and anyone with money and a minimal amount of commitment can learn how to do a Harold. They have mastered the art of teaching it.

However, since you don’t really need empathic abilities to be an improviser in today’s world it really freaks normal people out that I happen to be one. It can also cause a little discrimination because I have the ability to connect at a much deeper level. I have been accused of having romantic relationships with men I never dated and I have been accused of being a lesbian while being an improviser in Austin. A lot of female empaths are lesbians, but I am not one. I form much deeper connections with men. For the most part, I really enjoy working with men. I get along really well with men.

As a performer I am much stronger than I was in the late 90’s. That’s not good enough today. I have to be Rey. I will never be that good, no matter how much I try. It’s impossible to dream when the standards are so high. Back then I had to be Leia, which was a much different skill set. I had to hold my own with really outspoken men. That’s all.

I am good at dealing with misogynists and class clowns. In every improv class in the late 90’s there was at least one of each. Class clowns like to make people laugh by making someone else look bad. Since I am a redhead that someone was usually me. My dad’s favorite hobby was insulting me and bringing me down, so I was used to that as well. He thought he was being funny. I had actually gotten quite good at thinking of comebacks, so this felt natural on stage. It never bothered me to always be the girlfriend, daughter, mother, love interest, or wife in a scene. I felt happy just to be on the stage. I loved playing off of others, especially if they were really strong players. I did not enjoy being sexually harassed, but not enough to make me want to get off the stage. In some ways, it gave me a warped sense of self-esteem. How could you not with all these guys sexually harassing you all the time? The comedy scene was a place where very average looking women could go to feel like they are super models. In fact, most female comedians have a very inflated sense of self when it comes to their external beauty. It’s impossible not to. Just by the mere fact you have a vagina and do comedy you have now become gorgeous. No plastic surgery needed.

In modern iO I do have a problem with people completely blowing me off on stage and in classes. Men do not sexually harass women, not that they would want to harass me that way anyway. I am almost 40 and I am a mom. However, in the late 90’s a misogynist would be at least trying to put an older lady in her place and then I could come up with some witty comeback. Then everyone would crack up. Nope. They just completely blow me off now. I feel like I am in a perpetual audition for a high school musical, and it never ends. In auditions, people do whatever they can to stand out but no one ever really connects. That’s what classes at iO feel like.